How and to what extent could the French food production system ensure healthy and sustainable diets for its population while increasing its capability for self-sufficiency?
From a political point of view, there is a growing demand from consumers/citizens for what is considered a better control of the food chain and its social/societal externality for a more sustainable development with a re-appropriation of the territorial space at proximity. Political leaders now seem to follow and even support this trend with political agendas. However, the goal of self-sufficiency is also criticized for various reasons, and, above all, the many dimensions of the food system, such as health, environmental impact, acceptability and self-sufficiency, are not necessarily aligned.
We aim to analyze the tensions surrounding the implementation of a higher self-sufficiency in the agricultural production of foods, ensuring healthier and more sustainable diets. We will identify the pressures for an increase or decrease in the different domestic agricultural productions when aiming to produce more healthy and sustainable diets while reducing and redistributing the imports. We will provide an analysis of the conflicts over the different objectives (nutrition/health, environment and self-sufficiency), and we will explore the trade-offs on which an optimal food system could be based. We will also describe the prospective adaptability of the system to alleviate the tensions, for instance, with changes in agricultural production and transportation modes. We will analyze the regional and local contingencies and the extent to which agricultural socio-economic metabolism can adapt to support local transformation to meet a new prospective food demand better.
This interdisciplinary research project combines systemic approaches that consider the population’s diets, production capability, and transport network at the level of the country, as well as detailed case scenarios at the level of small agricultural regions. The approach largely resorts to modelling, with optimization and simulation models to identify the demand for agricultural products needed for healthier and more sustainable diets, iteratively recalibrate the environmental footprint of the reshaped domestic production, and understand the key parameters that favour or oppose the matching of production system network to this prospective new demand. Therefore, the research project includes (i) analyzing the conflicts between nutrition/health, environment and self-sufficiency, and delivering compromised diets as scenarios of demand for agricultural products, (ii) understanding how agricultural production could be reshaped in the national network so as to lower energy and GHGe associated with transports, and (iii) understanding how locally production areas could be transformed with different land uses and livestock allocations so that the production would better align with changes required in the national demand.
The project includes a strong dissemination program for the scientific community, the general public and political stakeholders.